There was a brief lull, and then someone cleared their throat.
Max sat in a chair at the far end of the meeting table. His suit was navy blue with a paisley tie of red and silver. St. George realized he could barely see Jarvis in Max’s face anymore. There was a little something around the eyes, a bit in the cheeks, but for the most part the salt-and-pepper man had vanished.
Another person consumed by the dead.
“Sorry I’m late,” Max said. “I was up all night working out a couple ideas before I lost them. With Cairax being so determined and aggressive I figured I needed to put some serious thought into banishing him.” He swung his feet up onto the table.
Freedom glanced at the door. “How did you …?”
Max twiddled his fingers in the air and smiled.
“He is wearing rubber-soled shoes,” said Stealth, “and the doors have pneumatic hinges.”
“Do you have no sense of wonder in your soul?” Max shook his head. “Good news is, I’ve got it figured out. I’ll need four days of prep and I can get rid of Cairax for good.”
“Really?” said Barry.
“Yep. So, what did I miss here? Anything that’s still relevant?”
“Josh’s escape,” said St. George, “and if we can go after him or not.”
“Anyone crossing the wards before I banish Cairax would be bad,” said Max. “Refresh my memory—who’s Josh?”
Danielle sighed. Stealth stiffened and crossed her arms. “Joshua Garcetti,” she said, “better known as Regenerator.”
“Wait,” said Max, sitting up. “Regenerator’s still alive?”
“Yeah,” said Barry. “You missed the big catch-up.”
“No way? It’s like we’re getting the band back together again. Where’s he been?”
“He was our prisoner,” said Stealth, “until he escaped two and a half hours ago. He is somewhere in Los Angeles beyond the Big Wall.”
“WHAT?”
Max leaped out of his chair so hard it skittered across the floor and hit the far wall. He looked at each of them in turn. His eyes were wide and his chest heaved. He pressed his hands against the tabletop. “Regenerator is out in the city? He’s past the wards?”
St. George nodded and shrugged. “Yeah.”
“Does he still have his powers? Just before everything collapsed I heard he’d lost his powers.”
“Still got ’em,” said Danielle.
“He took over a dozen twelve-gauge slugs during his escape,” said Freedom. “They barely slowed him.”
“Oh, Jesus,” muttered Max. He reached back and grabbed the back of his head. “Oh, fuck, fuck, fuck.”
Stealth crossed her arms. “Is there a problem?”
Max’s eyes were still huge. “Problem?” he echoed. “Well, everyone in Los Angeles has maybe nine or ten hours left to live. But other than that, yeah, things are just fantastic.”
“EXPLAIN,” SAID STEALTH.
Max shook his head. “Okay, look, the whole reason Cairax Murrain can’t manifest is because any host needs to meet two major conditions. They have to be alive and they need to be durable enough to survive the process of possession. That’s why it was so important that George didn’t go past the barriers. It could kill anyone, but it could actually possess him.”
“Okay,” said St. George with a nod.
“Well, now there’s a body out there that won’t die. Regenerator can take all that damage and keep going. He’s viable. So the instant he says yes, Cairax is going to start moving in, just like I did. And once he’s got flesh he’s going to march in here and kill every single man, woman, child, and fluffy kitten in the Mount.”
“But we’re safe inside, right?” Barry waved his arm at the window. “That’s the point of the symbols.”
Max shook his head. “We’re not safe. This isn’t remotely safe anymore. This is like being out in the middle of the ocean, a thousand miles from anything, on a six-dollar pool raft with a great white shark circling you. Except the raft has a hole in it and the shark’s armor-plated, on meth, and has a laser cannon mounted on its skull. That’s about how ‘safe’ we are.” He started to pace. “The wards only block his essence. They meant he couldn’t make someone pop inside the Mount. Once he’s got a body he can walk over those hexagrams just like you or me. And then everyone in here dies.”
Danielle played with the edge of the map on the table. “You sure do talk a lot about how awful this thing is.”
“Because I know you’re not getting it,” snapped Max. His pacing carried him from one side of the room to the other. “You all keep thinking back to George beating up a zombie, half-breed version of Cairax and telling yourself it’s no big deal.”
“And this is worse?” asked St. George.
“It’s the worst thing ever. Period. Every book you’ve read, every movie you’ve seen, this is a thousand times worse. This is one of the things every single villain you’ve ever heard of is based off because he’s so evil, knowledge of his existence leaks between dimensions. He’s so terrifying that when a bunch of idiot Satanists set him loose in the fourteenth century his name entered the language and became the word for plague.”
Freedom crossed his arms. On opposite sides of the room, it made him and Stealth look like a set of mismatched bookends.
“Remember when he bit you?” Max asked St. George. “Yeah, you do, don’t you? First time anything had hurt the Mighty Dragon in, what, two years at that point?”
The hero reached down and rubbed his arm.
Max nodded. “You want to know what you tasted like, George? You tasted scared. Fucking terrified. I was dead and in a possessed body and I could taste your fear on my tongue. That’s how strong it was.”
He stopped pacing and pointed at the window. “That thing out there, his whole existence boils down to two things. Fear and death. Someone being scared of dying is like sex for him if sex gave you a full stomach and did your laundry. Someone dying is
